And Google, Amazon, Apple.
Steam peaks at ~40-45 million concurrent users so far. The Switch sold over 150 million units. Of course, there’s no way to know what the peak concurrent switch users were, or the total count of unique steam users from 2017-2025, but I still think these numbers are good indicators that Steam is NOT the gigantic monopoly that the vocal minority of haters think they are.
In c/linuxmemes?
Sure, I might own the hardware
Not for long. The goal seems to be to make RAM, flash memory, and GPU’s so expensive that most consumers will need to purchase low-powered client devices and subscribe to cloud computing business models. It’s a handful of companies who are cornering the markets, controlling the supply, and seeking rents.
As silly as this is, licensing was the straw for me.
In high school, I built my first desktop and pirated Windows XP. In college, i built a PC for both my wife and myself and purchased two Windows 7 licenses really cheap with a student discount. In 2019, my PC died so I built a new one, re-used the license, and saved a lot of the old parts. In 2020 I got my wife a new PC (barely managed to buy the parts as the pandemic was starting).
So as the pandemic was in full force, I had enough functioning spare parts to make one gaming PC that would have been mid-tier 6 years prior. I put it in our unfinished basement and planned to mostly use it for playing videos or music while I worked out, maybe do some light stuff like personal email or web browsing or light gaming- since I started working remote full-time I didn’t want to spend much time in my office when I wasn’t working anymore.
So I had to choose an OS for it. Pirate Windows? Buy Windows? At that point I was constantly running into issues with Windows on our machines. Updates forcing themselves on us. My wife’s machine has upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 8 on its own somehow and was pretty terrible until she moved to Windows 10. I had tons of driver issues with the audio interface I used for music production. Windows had been getting slower and less responsive and had been rough on the older hardware. So I installed Mint Cinnamon.
There’s still a lot of things that are frustrating and annoying. More advanced things that almost no one would ever want to do are way easier, while simple everyday tasks make you jump through hoops. Installing programs from the default repository is great, but good fucking luck if what you want isn’t there. But it performs way better, is way more customizable, doesn’t have the spyware. Works way better with my audio interface.
Eventually I got an OrangePi and set it up as a Pi-Hole with Debian. I got a steam deck and love it. My wife got a laptop with Windows 11 and hated it so much I set it up to dual-boot Mint Cinnamon too.
It’s classic rent seeking. We will own nothing, just lease a low-powered client device from our phone carrier or ISP and do everything in the cloud with AI.
That seems to be the plan from these megacorps anyways.
Oh yeah I have as much respect for him as I can have for any other celebrity I’ve never met or interacted with at all. I just wanted to get ahead of anyone responding to me pointing out that he’s not particularly qualified on this subject.
The reason I referenced him at all was not because of his qualifications, but as a way of establishing how popular these conversations were on the internet at the time. In that sense, the fact that he’s not an AI or finance expert and doesn’t specialize in such content speaks to how widespread the topic was at the time.
The last one standing or the last one left holding the bag?
This can result in support for hardware and software being upwards of two to three YEARS out of date. Which for gamers for example is unacceptable and causes issues more often then not.
I think your perspective might be a bit biased towards your own bubble here. People are still buying Nintendo Switch’s. People are still buying Steam Decks.
I am getting close to 600 games in my Steam Library, but only 2 were released this year. Both were Indie games (Fragrance Point and Tower Wizard).
Ram is costing hundreds of dollars. GPU’s are costing thousands. Desktop gaming, heck desktop ownership in general, has been falling off. If people are still on x86, they are more likely to be on laptops.
For the average person, the idea that you need your OS to be updated every couple of weeks so that you can check your email and play Minecraft with your kids is insane.
Kind of gross how this article seems to be trying at every turn to say, “no ai is actually good! It helped us catch the bad businessmen that happen to be in the AI industry!” By focusing on a tiny trading period on November 20th.
Hank Green isn’t a finance bro or an AI guy or even really a tech guy. He’s just a guy reacting to things that are trending, and I remember I had seen the main graphic he was talking about floating around the internet for a while before I watched the video. People have been calling AI a “bubble” for much longer.
I am old enough to remember the report that 95% of generative AI companies failed to see returns from using it. That was back in August.
I don’t like giving credit to “trading algorithms” for things that humans figured out a long time ago.
Personally the only time I turn it off is if I am putting it in the case. Even then if it’s just a 15 minute car ride to a friend’s house I might just leave it on.
It’s also rare for me to go more than 2 days without playing it, and I mostly play around my house where I have USB cables around to plug it in if need be, so battery isn’t a huge concern. In fact I usually have the battery saving feature set to limit it to 80% charge.
The only reason I really turn it off in the case is our if heat concerns, and I suspect that’a just me being over protective. I guess the other thing is that there could be security and privacy concerns from carrying around a device with WiFi and/or Bluetooth on.
at a concert
There’s your problem. It doesn’t matter if you’re buying Dasani or Aquafina or Arizona Tea. Venues have captive audiences and jack up the prices because they can.
As of June 2025, Mike Cessario’s estimated net worth is around $80–100 million.
The CEO is wealthy, sure, but very far away from being a billionaire.
I’ve occasionally bought liquid death at my local beer distributor for parties, and it’s a bit expensive but not crazy. Pretty much every drink at a festival is incredibly overpriced - that markup is usually going to the vendors selling it and the venue, not the manufacturer.
Taxing the rich is not just “oh we as a society want money to do things, so let’s take that money from the people who have it”.
Taxing the rich is about removing the incentives that wealthy people have to seek out and hoard more wealth. Get them to stop trying to control everything and seek rents. Convince them to just be satisfied with being, in 2025, a USD hundred-millionaire. Force them to enjoy an early retirement.
The Dual shock 3 batteries are also really easy to replace. Maybe pushing the boundaries of what you’d reasonably call “user replaceable” but certainly something that I think anyone capable of usin g the controller and a PS3 would be capable of.
As an American I can confirm it goes back way further than 1950.
I think the main hangup is going to be: how easy and simple is this thing for the average person?
The Steam Deck is, any way you slice it, a better value than the Switch or Switch 2. The Steam Deck has sold roughly 6 million units in 3 years. The Nintendo Switch 2 has sold close to 11 million units in about 5 months.
I hope you’re right and that Valve really shakes up the whole industry, but I’m not going to start expecting that until I see it.
“It was just a joke bro, why are you taking everything so seriously? I was only spreading misleading information about a state’s economy in a conversation about economic policies, no big deal right?”
They keyword you are looking to search is “food desert”. Have fun.